Nova Lite 1.0 API pricing
Amazon · Budget price tier · Proprietary · released 2024-12. Prices in USD per 1 million tokens. Data snapshot: 2026-11-12.
A support ticket workload of 100K requests a month costs $21.00 on Nova Lite 1.0; the next cheaper model in the Budget price tier for this workload, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning, does it for $20.50. Nova Lite 1.0 has held the same list price since 2026-08-15 and is the 39th cheapest of 160 models in the Budget price tier. Only one host, Amazon Bedrock, sells it, so there is no second price to shop. It is rated a stable release but does not meet all four criteria of the FinOps Friendly badge.
- Input: $0.06 per 1M tokens
- Output: $0.24 per 1M tokens
- Batch API (in/out): Not published
- Prompt-cache read: Not published
- Context window: 300K tokens
- Arena ELO: 1229 as of 2026-11-08
Available on
AWS Bedrock, OpenRouter
AWS Bedrock regions: ap-northeast-1, ap-northeast-2, ap-northeast-3, ap-south-1, ap-southeast-1, ap-southeast-2, eu-central-1, eu-north-1, eu-west-1, eu-west-3, us-east-1, us-east-2, us-west-2
Curated by hand; check with the provider before committing.
Market position
On blended price ($0.186 per 1M tokens at 30% input, 70% output) it is cheaper than 75% of models in the Budget price tier: 39th cheapest of 160, tied with one other. Across every price tier it is cheaper than 87% of priced text models in the catalogue: 39th cheapest of 303, tied with one other. Its Arena ELO of 1229 ranks 152nd of the 160 models that carry one, tied with one other, above 4% of them. With an Arena score of 1229, Nova Lite 1.0 sits below OptimNow's lowest working quality threshold, Standard (Arena 1420+), so the quality-bar method would not shortlist it for any of the 8 use cases the table prices. Each threshold is a distance below the best ranked model, which scores 1530 on Arena scores as of 8 Nov 2026.
Licence, size and capabilities
Nova Lite 1.0 is recorded here as proprietary: access is through an API, priced by the token. Its parameter count is not published. Listed capabilities: Text, Vision, Agents. Filling its 300K context window once costs $0.018 in input tokens at list price.
Pricing by host
A host is a company that runs the model and sells it by the token: the model maker, a cloud platform like Amazon Bedrock, Azure or Vertex, or an independent host. One model, several hosts, and often several prices. This model is sold by 1 host. The price we quote elsewhere on this page is marked. We quote one host's rate so that models stay comparable; it is not a recommendation to buy there.
Amazon Bedrock is the only host with a published rate, $0.06 input / $0.24 output per 1M tokens, which is the price we quote.
| Host | Input $/1M | Output $/1M |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon Bedrock (model maker, price we quote) | $0.06 | $0.24 |
List prices as published on 2026-11-12, via OpenRouter. Negotiated rates, committed-use discounts and provisioned capacity are not shown.
Monthly cost at 100K requests, by business use case
From the after-discounts figure (prompt caching on the cached input share, batch API for async workloads, only where Amazon publishes those rates), which assumes you implement both, to the list price. One figure means no discount is published.
| Use case | Tokens (in/out) | Monthly (after discounts – list) |
|---|---|---|
| Support Ticket | 1,500 / 500 | $21 |
| Knowledge Q&A | 2,000 / 800 | $31 |
| Meeting Summary | 10,000 / 1,200 | $89 |
| Marketing Content | 2,500 / 1,800 | $58 |
| Coding Task | 3,000 / 2,000 | $66 |
| Invoice Processing | 1,500 / 600 | $23 |
| Call Summary | 2,000 / 700 | $29 |
| Agent Workflow | 6,000 / 3,000 | $108 |
Price history
Nova Lite 1.0 has been in our daily price archive since tracking began on 2026-08-15, when it listed at $0.06 input / $0.24 output per 1M tokens. No list price change since tracking began on 2026-08-15. Last checked against the 2026-11-12 snapshot.
Alternatives to Nova Lite 1.0
2 of the 4 comparable models below cost less than Nova Lite 1.0: Mistral Small 3 undercuts it by 62%, and scores 5 Arena points higher.
- Next cheaper model in the Budget price tier: Llama Guard 4 12B (Meta) at $0.18 blended, 3% less.
- Next more expensive: Nex-N2.5-Pro (nex-agi) at $0.1975 blended, 6% more.
The nearest models in the Budget price tier on Arena ELO, each with its blended price and score difference against Nova Lite 1.0.
- Qwen2.5 Coder 32B Instruct (Alibaba): $0.66 in / $1.00 out per 1M, Arena ELO 1230 (383% more expensive, 1 ELO point higher)
- Gemma 2 27B (Google): $0.65 in / $0.65 out per 1M, Arena ELO 1231 (249% more expensive, 2 ELO points higher)
- Mistral Small 3 (Mistral): $0.05 in / $0.08 out per 1M, Arena ELO 1234 (62% cheaper, 5 ELO points higher)
- Phi 4 (Microsoft): $0.07 in / $0.14 out per 1M, Arena ELO 1217 (36% cheaper, 12 ELO points lower)
- Cheapest within 15 Arena points: Mistral Small 3 (Mistral), 62% cheaper, 5 ELO points higher, out of 6 models in that band.
- Highest Arena ELO within 20% of this price: DeepSeek V4 Flash 0423 (DeepSeek), 18% cheaper, 203 ELO points higher, out of 7 models in that price band.
Other models from Amazon
Amazon has 4 other models in the catalogue. Prices per 1M tokens, input then output.
- Nova Micro 1.0: $0.035 / $0.14
- Nova 2 Lite: $0.30 / $2.50
- Nova Pro 1.0: $0.80 / $3.20
- Nova Premier 1.0: $2.50 / $12.50
All 5 Amazon models and prices
Common questions about Nova Lite 1.0 pricing
- How much does Nova Lite 1.0 cost?
- Nova Lite 1.0 costs $0.06 per 1M input tokens and $0.24 per 1M output tokens. That is the model maker's own rate (Amazon Bedrock). Prices as listed on 2026-11-12.
- Which host is cheapest for Nova Lite 1.0?
- Amazon Bedrock is the only host with a published rate, $0.06 input / $0.24 output per 1M tokens, which is the price we quote. Host rates as listed on 2026-11-12.
- Does Nova Lite 1.0 offer batch or cached pricing?
- No. Neither a batch rate nor a prompt-cache rate is published for Nova Lite 1.0 as of 2026-11-12.
- What would Nova Lite 1.0 cost per month?
- With the Support Ticket profile (1,500 input and 500 output tokens per request), 100,000 requests a month cost about $21 on Nova Lite 1.0 at the list price quoted on 2026-11-12.
- Can Nova Lite 1.0 be self-hosted?
- No, as far as this site records. Nova Lite 1.0 is recorded here as proprietary: access is through an API, priced by the token.
- Has the price of Nova Lite 1.0 changed?
- Nova Lite 1.0 has been in our daily price archive since tracking began on 2026-08-15, when it listed at $0.06 input / $0.24 output per 1M tokens. No list price change since tracking began on 2026-08-15. Last checked against the 2026-11-12 snapshot.
It carries an Arena score, so it can be read against its price: the models that beat their price class.
These are list prices. Your real cost also depends on caching and batching, negotiated discounts, marketplace agreements, and the contracts you already have. OptimNow audits exactly that.
Build the business case · Get a FinOps review
LLM pricing · Models by maker · Cloud compute pricing · Compare models · Price barometer · FinOps guides · API and MCP server